


Desert Rain

by legion



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-06
Updated: 2011-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:24:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legion/pseuds/legion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam pays Al a visit</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desert Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Sam is Leaping as himself, and Al is married to Beth.

Desert Rain

The low rumble of thunder pulled Al from sleep, but he stayed beside Beth a moment, gathering his thoughts before slipping out of bed, leaving her soundly sleeping. She was too used to his comings and goings to so much as stir, for which he was profoundly grateful. There was no way he wanted to explain the next to few hours to her, or the ones like them in the past, let alone share.

He made his way to the patio, automatically stopping by his office for a cigar, and lit it as he found his usual spot at the corner of the low brick wall that enclosed the area. Greeted by another echo of thunder, he scanned the horizon until he found the lightning marking the rare desert rainstorm, admiring the beauty of the natural fireworks even as he dreaded what it heralded. Dreaded, and, he admitted to himself reluctantly, anticipated.

The thunder sounded yet again, this time accompanied by a flash of lightning so brilliant that Al lost his sight for a moment. When it returned, he was no longer alone, but he didn't look directly at his companion. Despite the storm's warning, it always took him a few minutes to brace himself.

It wasn't that he didn't want to see Sam. He missed him so much that he cherished even these brief, infinitely sad encounters. It was just that it wasn't always Sam who appeared. Sometimes it was a thing wearing Sam's face, and that was so hard to take that Al sometimes thought the pain of it might eventually kill him.

Sam didn't seem to mind the wait for Al to compose himself, and a comfortable silence that fed Al's soul enfolded them both. Before long, though, he gathered himself together and said, addressing the thunder swept desert, "It's been a while."

"From your perspective; not so long for me." Sam smiled uncertainly, eyes on the brick surface of the patio. "Doesn't make me any less glad to see you."

Sighing, Al breathed, "Ahhh, Sammy."

Apparently unwilling to let Al use his confession as an opening to questions he wouldn't - or couldn't - answer, Sam said, "Ziggy still trying to get a lock on me?"

"Wrote herself a dandy little sub-routine that runs twenty-four/seven," Al said, bouncing on his heels a little in delight at the hybrid computer's inventiveness.

"She's not taking processing power away from the researchers, is she?"

Sam's tone was casual, too casual to Al's ears, and he wondered for the umpteenth time what it hid. Nevertheless, he answered in the same vein. "Ha! It hasn't come up yet; the eggheads are still arguing over how to best 'utilize her capabilities.' Sometimes it sounds like they're fighting over a real woman. Ziggy gets a big kick out of it."

"I can imagine." With a slight, telling hesitation, punctuated by a roll of thunder and distant flash of light, Sam added, "That was a good idea of yours - to lease out her time to keep Stallion's Gate going. I would have loved seeing you sell it to the senate committee."

Letting his mouth run on automatic and trying to feel his way to what was behind Sam's comments, Al said, "It was a kick in the butt. Now we're looking into using the Imaging Chamber for medical purposes - the mapping technique behind it, anyway. That glitch I told you about hasn't been resolved, as far as using it for neural holographic projection."

"Hmm," Sam said with a disinterest that wasn't like him, considering he was the one who created the process and machinery for it. "Verbena come up with that idea?"

"It's a good one." An especially loud crack of thunder interrupted them, sounding too much like a warning for Al's paranoid mindset, but it didn't stop him from probing carefully. "We could have gotten a lot of mileage out of the quantum accelerator, but it's been offline, too. Gushie's ready to believe it gremlins, they're having so much trouble pinning down what's wrong with it."

"The equations that allowed it to operate showed a very delicate balance of input and output was needed," Sam said distantly, face blanking as if he were concentrating hard on something other than their conversation. There was pain there, too, which was new and alarming.

Sam half-hugged himself, and Al could feel him gathering his resources, as if summoning something from outside himself. Suddenly wary, Al took a slow, calculating puff of his cigar and waited for the shoe to drop. To his surprise, Sam went straight to the request that normally ended their storm-announced visits.

"Al, let me go." The words were always the same, delivered in varying levels of despair, demand, pleading, or command. This time, they were flat: a formality to get out of the way.

As always, Al said, "Not while I live and breathe."

And, as always, there was a flash of relief and gratitude, but Sam fearfully hid it, as if there was some dire consequence for wanting Al's adamant refusal. Despite that, he said, thunder giving his prediction authority, "I'm never going to Leap home. You have to know that by now."

"I don't believe that. I never will." Al turned his back to Sam, mind tumbling with possibilities on the *why* behind the necessity for having this conversation over and over. He had never doubted that Sam was being forced into it, as some sort of bizarre punishment or torture by God knew who or what. Sam tried to give him hints, like tonight, in how he spoke, by his expression and how he moved. Every attempt to approach the problem directly had ended in Sam being yanked away.

Sticking with the part he had to play, Al added, "You know me better than that. I can't, Sammy. I can't!"

Shoulders tense, Al waited for him to continue with his arguments, but Sam did the last thing he expected. He stepped close enough that if he had really been there, the heat of him would have scored over Al's body. As it was, the warm wind from the storm trickled into his robe and pajamas, almost as if Sam were gently petting him. It was such an odd thought, even odder to want it, that Al shuddered and spun to face him.

Sam was staring down at him, glowing from the inside out with the power that he had been drawing, but his eyes were lit with something else entirely. As sweetly seductive as Al had ever seen him on a Leap, he lowered his head until his mouth was only a thought away from Al's. "Not even if I tell you it means everything to me that you believe me, trust me that I know what I'm asking?"

More flustered than he could ever remember at being on the receiving end of a pass, even the rare one from a guy, Al jerked his jaw up back where it belonged and narrowed his eyes. Not backing up the step he wanted to take, he said with a cutting gesture, "What do you think you're playing at!"

"I'm not playing at all," Sam murmured. "But I need to convince you, and sometimes a lover will listen when a friend won't."

"Sam...."

"Shhhh." Sam touched their lips together, barely brushing softness over softness.

Al had a split second to think, "He shouldn't be able to do this! He's only a projected image!" before his brain shut down under the weight of unbelievable pleasure. The light contact sent waves of sensation over his skin, not just at his mouth, but everywhere, as if being kissed all over, all at once. Of its own accord, his body moved closer, pressing into Sam in a way that should have been impossible, dick lengthening, hardening, seeking out the source of the wondrous thing happening to him.

Breathing his name, Sam lifted away just enough to trail more kisses down to Al's ear. Al let him, cursing himself for being too weak to run - or for not doing this much, much sooner. He wasn't sure which. Once before, in a history so distant he hardly remembered it, Sam had kissed him with this same surety and longing, if not with the added punch of whatever was fueling Sam's ability to do so now. It had been during his divorce from his fourth - no, fifth - wife, and he'd been drunk out of his mind, miserable because of it.

As Al had worked the Leaps with him, he had come to understand and accept that Sam loved him and had only wanted to make that plain in the language Al knew best, but that night Al had turned the kiss into a silly, sloppy thing, making a joke of it. The next day he'd started up with Tina, pushing the incident into a dark part of his mind marked, 'danger.' It helped that Sam had acted as if it had never happened, and with the maturity only years can bring, Al had eventually realized that the love didn't have to be expressed sexually to be real and strong.

So why was Sam acting on it now? The question burned through the sensual haze trying to block out everything but Sam's barely there caress, and Al gave himself a mental shake. And Sam would never break marriage vows - his or anyone else's. So there was something else going on here besides an attempt at seducing him into doing as he asked.

Though they were both high and heavy, Al's mind cleared, and he whispered directly into Sam's ear, as if sexually coaxing, "Can they hear?"

"Not with the energy I'm giving off." Sam nuzzled into Al's shoulder in genuine hunger. With a tiny sound of supplication, he pressed a tiny kiss to the side of Al's neck, and added almost too quietly to be heard, "No matter what they make me do, don't let go. As long as you hold onto me, heart and mind, they can't keep me when they capture me."

Taking in a long, sipping breath to hide his elation at having some real information to work with, Al whispered, "I wouldn't anyway. Anything else I can do?"

Pulling away with obvious and flattering reluctance, Sam said, "Forgive me for this?"

Al shut his eyes against the unexpected hurt of Sam thinking he even had to ask. "If you'll forgive me for not taking you up on your offer when we were both free."

Cold wind whirled over him as the first raindrops fell, and when he opened his eyes, Sam was gone, and all Al could do was pray that he'd given him another tool to use in his fight.

***

Caught in a web of light that twisted and crackled like the lightning it resembled, Sam watched the entity in front of him 'pace' back and forth angrily. From one moment to the next It looked different, becoming various people Sam had either known or Leaped into, but never the same person twice. He stored that tidbit with all the other facts he'd accumulated during his captivities, and waited for the inevitable explosion of frustration.

Finally It ground to a stop in front of him, Its features a terrifying mishmash, and said in eerie imitation of Al, "What did you think you were playing at!"

With a show of irritated worry that he didn't really feel, Sam said, "Seduction was the only thing I *haven't* tried."

"Tell me another one; Calavicci's phobic," It snorted.

"He's seen me as a woman more than once, and been attracted to me because of it," Sam explained with mock patience. "If that was lingering in the back of his mind, well, he thinks with his other head all the time, and is notorious for getting talked into things because of it. The worst that could have happened is that he'd be so disgusted with the come-on that he'd be happy to tell me to get permanently lost."

Changing tactics, Sam bit out, "It was working, too. Why did you yank me back?"

It glared at him. "I didn't, as you damn well know. You used up all the power you'd accumulated, so you snapped back here." Trying a different tact, It snarled, "Why is that, I wonder? You could have Leaped into another 'wrong to right' like you always do." It flicked at one of the lines of light binding Sam, sending a sharp pain through him. "Are you starting to like what I do for you?"

"Why do you keep taking me?" Sam countered. "You can't hold me for very long, and we both know that Al is never going to give up on me."

For a second he thought he had surprised and confused It into telling him the truth, but It shook its head once, and turned away. "Why do you keep Leaping? You can stop any time you want."

"It would be surrendering," Sam said dismissively. "I'm not any more capable of that than Al is."

"Then the both of you will have to keep paying the price!" It plunged both hands into the webbing, pouring energy into the field that would force Sam to Leap.

That was the last thing Sam expected and he strained to see his surroundings clearly in hopes of spotting some hint of why It would release him before it had to. He caught a glimpse of pure, unadulterated fear in its multi-layered face just as he Leaped, and realized with a start that he and Al and finally won a round. The thing had truly begun to believe that It could not force them to abandon one another.

In the bare seconds he had before he materialized into a new Time, a new life to put back on the right tracks, Sam voicelessly shouted his triumph to the universe. He might never be able to Leap home again, but the possibility existed, no matter how remote, that he would Leap back to Al. That was more than enough for him.


End file.
